Disaffected youth increasingly drawn to extremism in Egypt

The 20-year-old law student says he has had enough of fruitless protests in support of Egypt’s deposed Islamist president, two years of a losing struggle with police.Now he wants to join the extremists of the Islamic State group who are battling the army in the Sinai Peninsula.He and other youths are growing increasingly open in their calls for violence and a move toward extremism, frustrated by the police crackdown since the military ousted President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. Some want to avenge friends and family killed or abused by police.

Once sympathetic to Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, some of them resent it as weak and ineffectual.“Now we know there is only one right way: jihad,” said the law student, Abdelrahman, showing off scars from pellets fired at him by police shotguns during protests. like other protesters interviewed by The Associated Press, he spoke on condition he be identified only by his first name for fear of police retaliation.He spoke bitterly about the series of ballot box victories in 2011 and 2012 that gave the Muslim Brotherhood political dominance and made Morsi the country’s first freely elected President.